Our search for exoplanets is focused on Milky Way stars. It's been successful, with more than 6,000 detected so far. Scientists are even beginning to move beyond mere detections, and working on ...

For a decade and a half, astronomers have been on the trail of a galactic mystery. In 2011, a project that surveyed the Milky Way galaxy for exoplanets — which are planets beyond our solar system — ...

Across the galaxy, astronomers now see that planetary systems fall into four broad classes, and our own solar system, part of the rare Ordered group, is only one of them. At the same time, discoveries ...

This image indicates the location of the newly discovered binary star D9, which is orbiting Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first star pair ever ...

Orbiting a small, cool M dwarf star once every 4,170 days, the planet's location is remarkable — it is only the third planet in the entire history of space observation to be discovered so far away ...

Some of the most promising places to look for extraterrestrials have remained, so far, mostly hidden from astronomers. Now a game-changing instrument called NIRPS (Near-Infrared Planet Searcher) is ...

For centuries our solar system was the only planetary system known to humans. We had no proof other worlds existed beyond those in our own cosmic backyard, and we imagined that if other planetary ...